Tales of the Grey Bard
by Hieronymus Graubart
Summary: Scorpius Malfoy is obviously wrong about the world as we know it depending on Neville Longbottom. This may be an anvil-sized hint that not everything the characters say in "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child" should be taken at face value. The Tales of the Grey Bard may shed some light on what's really going on. Cover Image by kris.
1. Rodolphus Lestrange and the New Dark Que

Rodolphus Lestrange and the New Dark Queen

DISCLAIMER: The _Harry Potter_ series of books was created by Joanne K. Rowling. I'm just playing in her precious and delightful garden (or may it be her backyard today?), and I solemnly swear to leave it as neatly in order as I found it. If you haven't read these books yet, go and do it now. Then, if you still want to, come back here. Everything you recognize is obviously not my creation, and I don't claim it.

 _Harry Potter and the Cursed Child_ is a play written by Jack Thorne (and directed by John Tiffany), based on an unpublished story by J.K. Rowling, John Tiffany and Jack Thorne. Saying that you should go and watch it now would be cruel, because most of us probably can't, and I myself only read the Special Rehearsal Script. You may go and read this too, or you may wait for the finalized version, which will be the Collector's Edition, and come back when you have read that. Any contradictions between this story and the final version of the play are my fault, because I'm impatient and couldn't wait.

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During a summer night, under a crescent moon and a starry sky only occasionally obscured by a drifting cloud, a newborn child was found, wrapped in worn-out robes, on the threshold of a shop in Hogsmeade. Incidentally, it may have been the night when Albus Dumbledore fell off the Astronomy Tower under suspicious circumstances, and the shopkeepers may have gone out on the streets to look at what caused the shouts and the fighting sounds from Hogwarts. But the exact date and place doesn't actually matter.

When all attempts to identify the child and to find her parents had failed, the little girl was finally given to Euphemia Rowle to raise her as best as she could. Some of the Rowles are known to have been pretty extreme Death Eaters, but Euphemia was never accused of supporting the Dark Lord, and never spent a day in Azkaban. Unfortunately, the world is not divided into good people and Death Eaters. The girl later claimed that Ms Rowles only took her in for the money the Ministry of Magic paid her. This money, of course, was meant to support the child, not to increase the foster mother's wealth, but the little orphan never got to see much of it. She was kept short on everything and forced to earn food, goods and attention by doing household chores from an early age, and despite all her efforts, Euphemia never stopped telling her that she was useless and overall a terrible person.

Things didn't get better when Euphemia found out that her foster child was a Parselmouth. Unlike many mislead people, Ms Rowles did not believe that every Parselmouth must be a descendant of Salazar Slytherin. However, this did not prevent her speculating that the ill-bred girl she had taken in might be Voldemort's daughter, and she used to say that the Augurey she kept in a cage probably knew and cried because it did foresee the sticky end this cursed child would come to. The girl, meanwhile, learned to obey and to suffer silently, and she desperately hoped for some lost relative to show up to take her away from that spiteful person. Her wish was fulfilled in the worst way possible.

When Rodolphus Lestrange returned from Azkaban, he still was an unrepentant Death Eater, although he had long come to think that he was better off without the constant thread of being tortured for less-than-perfect performance. Talking to his former companions or their friends and relatives, he soon learned that Voldemort was really gone for good, and that no other Dark Lord rising had shown up yet. But when he visited Euphemia Rowle, he found out that she raised an orphaned Parselmouth whose parents were unknown, and knowing that he was not made of Dark Lord material himself and nobody in their right mind would listen to him, Rodolphus came up with a cunning plan: He would be the new Dark Queen's advisor and grey eminence, pulling the strings from backstage.

Rodolphus Lestrange found ways to talk to the young girl behind her foster mother's back and found her quite susceptible. He pretended to have known her parents, and he told a quite romantic and slightly gothic tale of lovers who could not confess their love in public for complex political and magical reasons. The orphan soaked it up with delight. Of course her father, the great Dark Lord, would not give his royal consort's hand to anybody but his most trusted follower. Of course her mother, the greatest witch of all times, would not accept to be married off to anybody but her lover's second in command. It all made so much sense, although some of the details didn't actually match historical records or Euphemia's tale of how the child had come to her. In the young Parselmouth's mind, the old hag was just as trustworthy as official history books written by the victors – not at all! Given the first choice in her life, she ran away with Rodolphus Lestrange.

But Rodolphus was unlucky. The girl he intended to make a Dark Queen never showed much interest in ruling the world. She rather pestered her advisor with questions about magical means to bring her demised parents back. In her mind, "Bellatrix's loyal husband" was still just a surrogate for a happy family, and that was all she wanted. Rodolphus realized soon that he would lose his future Queen's trust if he insisted that the dead can never be brought back. To keep the girl interested in his advice, he made up a prophecy about the Dark Lord's return, and he worded it carefully to distract from any reasonable ways of using a Time-Turner in case one would ever be found. Then he continued advising her that she should gain power first and establish her rule before she even tried to find a Time-Turner, some spares to spare and some invisible children who were willing to murder their fathers.

What happened to Rodolphus Lestrange is not known. Since Azkaban, in the midst of the Northern Sea, never became a healthy living place even when the Dementors had left, Rodolphus may have already been sick when he returned, and he may just have worn himself out before his plans came to fruition. Or his future Dark Queen may just have been fed up with his insistence that she should rule rather than her father, and may have run away again.

Even when her advisor was gone, the girl who had gotten an Augurey tattoo in remembrance of her awful foster mother and to remind herself that the future was now hers to make never actually learned to make decisions on her own. She continued depending on prophecies to tell her what should or should not be done. What finally happened to the poor girl when she found an interpretation of Rodolphus's fake prophecy that made sense to her is known far too well. Everybody talked about it when the Wizengamot sent her to Azkaban for murdering Craig Bowker, but only few observers noticed that minor accusations, like illegal use of a Time-Turner and attempting to change history, had been shoved under the rug.

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A/N: Thanks to my beta readers Iximaz and Storme Hawk of the Protectors of the Plot Continuum, and my apologies for this being a mere draft of what might be written if I had the time and skill.


	2. The Rise of the Augurey

The Rise of the Augurey

DISCLAIMER: if you started reading with Chapter One, you have already seen the disclaimer. If not so, why don't you go back to do this right?

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In an alternate world, where Harry Potter did not feel responsible for Cedric Diggory's death, he turned into an even more reckless brat than he had already been – a typical daring Gryffindor. For some time, this didn't show any bad consequences.

This Harry was not afraid of causing another death by simply telling about what was going on at Hogwarts. He opened the gift that Sirius gave to him at the end of the fifth year's winter holidays and they happily chatted through the two-way mirrors whenever Harry felt like talking to his godfather.

When the Dark Lord tried to lure Harry Potter into the Department of Mysteries, Harry did not depend on Dolores Umbridge's fireplace and listening to Kreacher's lies to find out whether Sirius was actually there. Thus, by worrying less, Harry actually kept Sirius alive longer. But at the end of the year, Albus Dumbledore was still not sure whether the time had come to tell Harry the full truth about the prophecy and the Horcruxes, and Cornelius Fudge and great parts of wizardkind continued to dwell in the delusion that there was no Dark Lord to combat.

Since Voldemort could not blame Lucius Malfoy for Harry not showing up in the Hall of Prophecy, Draco Malfoy was never tasked with killing Dumbledore, Severus Snape never stepped in, and Voldemort never came to believe that he must kill Snape to become the master of the Elder Wand. But Snape never won the Dark Lord's trust to such an extent that he would be made Headmaster at Hogwarts when Voldemort took over.

Lacking the bad experience of a recent encounter with Albus Dumbledore, Voldemort nourished hope that the aging warlock might have lost some of his skill, and in making plans for Harry's sixth Hogwarts year, the Dark Lord did not shy away from a direct confrontation with the only one he had once feared. Wizardkind does not know how and why the Dark Lord and his followers broke through Hogwarts' magic shields in mid-winter. They may have tried to abduct Sybill Trelawney to interrogate her about the prophecy she had made. When Albus Dumbledore protected the Divination teacher, he had already been weakened by the cursed ring, and thus Lord Voldemort succeeded in killing his old enemy before he fled from the united forces of teachers, Dumbledore's Army, members of the Order of the Phoenix guarding Hogwarts, and incoming Aurors.

Now the fact that Voldemort had returned could no longer be denied; he had been seen by too many witnesses in the event that became known as the Battle of the Divination Tower. Rufus Scrimgeour was made the new Minister for Magic, but Albus Dumbledore had not yet finished preparations for the death he had known to be inevitable. The Order of the Phoenix was left without a designated leader, neither Harry Potter nor Severus Snape had yet learned everything they needed to know, and Hermione Granger did not inherit the book that would have pointed her to the Deathly Hallows.

After some more months of preparation, early in Harry's seventh Hogwarts year, Voldemort took over the Ministry of Magic. Not caring much for the danger he would bring to his friends, Harry Potter attempted to organize resistance, but realization that Pius Thicknesse was only a figurehead and what the Dark Lord's rule actually meant had not spread far yet, Harry did not get much support even at Hogwarts, and only few reinforcements arrived before Dumbledore's Army was defeated in the Battle of Hogwarts that is now celebrated as Voldemort Day in late October.

Since the Dark Lord had won, no Death Eaters were arrested after the Battle of Hogwarts. The orphaned Parselmouth was still raised by Euphemia Rowle, but Rodolphus Lestrange never showed up to take her away. When the girl came of age, she still got an Augurey tattoo, and she joined Voldemort's Death Eaters guard just to spite Euphemia. Nobody could obey orders as relentlessly as she did, and by doing great things – terrible, but great – she rose through the ranks, until she sat at the Dark Lord's side, his heir in spirit if not in flesh.

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A/N: Thanks again to my beta readers Iximaz and Storme Hawk, and apologies for another draft. I can't write novels.


	3. The Fall of the Hufflepuff Champion

The Fall of the Hufflepuff Champion

DISCLAIMER: if you started reading with Chapter One, you have already seen the disclaimer. If not so, why don't you go back to do this right?

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In an alternate world, where he survived the Triwizard Tournament, Cedric Diggory did not join Dumbledore's Army. He had already finished school when Dolores Umbridge arrived at Hogwarts. But he continued dating Cho Chang at Hogsmeade days and during school holidays, and from her tales he may have guessed that Harry Potter had a crush on Cho. He certainly heard about the cruel treatment of Cho's best friend, and when Harry Potter and Hermione Granger turned down his request to lift the curse off Marietta Edgecombe, it became the last time he had talked to them.

From there on, the Diggorys virtually vanished from historical records. Some witnesses claim that they met Cedric many years after the Battle of Hogwarts, and that he had turned into a dark and dangerous person. Some say that Amos Diggory was slain by goblin renegades or rebellious house-elves, who may or may not have been in alliance with Dumbledore's Army or the Order of the Phoenix, for always being nasty to non-humans. Some say that Cedric Diggory killed Neville Longbottom, who may or may not have tried to defend his allies against Cedric's rage, in the Battle of Hogwarts or on some other occasion. Some say that Cedric had actually become a Death Eater, but the details are lost to history.

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A/N: I give up. There is nearly nothing to work with here, and I'm obviously better at analyzing and interpreting stuff than at making it up. One's for sure, though: Even the best may break if they are stressed too far, but having his Bubble-Head blown up to a ridiculous size is not sufficient to turn Cedric evil. There must have been more.

Thanks again to my beta readers Iximaz and Storme Hawk.


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